


Character Studies

by YourPalYourBuddy



Category: The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr, short and sweet, wanted a place where they'd all be in one spot so here we are
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-01-16 01:01:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18510718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YourPalYourBuddy/pseuds/YourPalYourBuddy
Summary: Taking a quick detour into several characters :) no real plot, more musings





	1. Annie

It is because she has trouble seeing that she hears things so well. It’s easy in her attic; her sisters arguing over inventory and her own latest order of shoes rises easily through the floorboards until she can believe she’s arguing with them. Annie knits and clamps down the impulse to stumble her way down the stairs. 

She isn’t lonely up here, not really. Not since ten years ago when Brian Carroll stumbled into the shop looking lost and wave tossed. Annie persuaded him to be her companion when he can, which isn’t often, but he describes things in such detail that it hardly matters. The day after George Holly’s American accent shakes dust from the rafters she asks for an opinion. Brian’s description of him is very flattering. 

Once, before their father left them, she heard him tell someone how he found her and her sisters, how they aren’t his, not really, and how they aren’t each other’s by blood anyhow. She’s not sure how she remembers this but she makes sure not to tell Elizabeth or Dory Maud. She is quiet but she isn’t stupid and they’re already enough family for all three of them. Blood will never change that.

Enough, except. She knows by now that there’s always an except. 

Benjamin Malvern takes her to dinner in that fancy hotel and that night they make more than enough family. Annie hadn’t had Brian to describe Malvern to her though, so she doesn’t blame herself now these years later when she finds out the man Benjamin grew to become. 

Malvern keeps their son to inherit his horses. Annie needs no one to inherit her rafters. She cries when Brian tells her of Matthew’s death.

Annie is quiet but her quietness likes an audience some days, though it doesn’t need one. Most days her knitted sweaters are enough. Other ones she asks Brian to take her walking where she thinks George Holly will be, and his surprise to see her rings as clear and warm as the church bells. 

Some other days, it’s more than enough to sit on the cliffs and let the wind weave patterns across her skin and in her hair. These days she wears her best shoes. 

Today Brian describes the sea crashing before them, but it’s because she has trouble seeing that she can hear it so well. It shatters and soothes and shatters over and over on end and if she closes her eyes tight enough she can see it. It looks the way George Holly feels under her hands in the early morning, infinity and possibility stretching far beyond her eyes. 

It tastes like his collar when she misses his cheek with her lips. She thinks she’s a little in love with it.

 


	2. Thomas Gratton

Thomas Gratton is a simple man who likes familiarity. He has his butcher shop with the groove etched in the floor from all the riders over the years and it is where it should be. He has his favorite knife, the one long as his forearm and as wide as Beech when he was still scrunched and crying like the seagulls on race day, short squalling bites of sound. The chalkboard hangs above his head as always and the deliveries come in on Wednesdays at four o’clock exactly and he knows by now if he asks Puck Connolly if she wants a ride, Puck Connolly will say yes, and if he asks Sean Kendrick his odds, Sean Kendrick will cross his arms and study the cow hanging from the ceiling. He knows this island. He knows the folks who’ll get wine drunk and sign up only to withdraw, quietly and with low brimmed hats, the next morning. He knows who will haggle with him over prices and who will give Peg the eyes when she cuts a cow’s heart out clean and who she will give the eyes to back. 

Thomas Gratton is a simple man who is easy to leave. He has his son until the day Beech sits him and Peg down and says, artless, that he’s going away with Tommy Falk and Gabe Connolly to the mainland. He has his knife until he runs his finger along the blade and remembers the way Beech clung to him like a shadow all those years ago. He has his Wednesday deliveries until Benjamin Malvern persuades him to change his mind with sharp smiles and watchful eyes. He has his chalkboard until Beech shatters it with a football. He has his Sunday hagglers until Palsson opens his doors the second of October and sugar dusts the street. He knows this island until he takes a wrong turn one night that should take him into Skarmouth, but instead spits him out by the beaches the tourists take over. He has Peg until he loses her too, until he sees Gabe Connolly giving her the eyes and watches the way she gives them back. Peg would never consent to say she was lost, though, and Thomas would never make her that small. 

Thomas Gratton is a simple man. He wishes now and then, looking at a table that sat three, that he was one worth taking along, too.

 


	3. Elizabeth

The locals don’t ask about it much anymore, but when a tourist pops in and questions the name, Elizabeth smiles, strained, and tells them, “Stick around long enough and you might find out.”

She doesn’t tell them that things on Thisby are more often named for bloody things than not. Skarmouth itself is a name born from pain. 

If truth must be told it’s Dory Maud’s child, this shop. Elizabeth knows by now not to ask questions she doesn’t want to cut herself on, but Dory Maud was always running headfirst onto unpleasant truths when they were young. The mistresses in their care home grew rather exasperated by it by the time they left the home behind them. 

The only straight answer Dory Maud heard from the mistresses was this, plain and simple: the girls were abandoned one fall by a merchant who decided his love of travel outweighed his love of his motherless daughters. Elizabeth suspects, even these years later, that for Dory Maud and Annie the shop is a way of reaching for their father. She herself has no interest in him. She has never liked inconstancy, and it would be inconstant of him to return. 

The children running around the schoolyard make up stories of what’s kept in their storerooms. Her favorite theories are those about sunken treasure chests and terrible storms, simply because they make some sort of sense; why else would the store include Fathom in the name, if not to reference the depths of the Scorpio Sea? She tells Dory Maud this one morning, accusation resting heavily before them on the plate just to the right of the bacon, and her sister just sighs loudly and asks for the milk. They’ve had this argument before.

Elizabeth’s pain rests not in her family but in her left hip when the weather gets bad. Her fears are not of being alone for the rest of her life but of whether or not they can afford to send Annie to the mainland for treatment without pushing her onto George Holly. Elizabeth was not born on this island, but damned if she will not die here. 

“Stick around long enough and you might find out.” None of the tourists have stayed for enough time to be worthy of the answer, so none of them are told. Elizabeth has never liked inconstancy.

 


	4. Brian

Brian Carroll carries lists of things he wants answers to in a journal that was a rare birthday present. The first list looks like this:  _ 1\. Where do fish sleep when they’re not swimming? 2. Why don’t my knots look as good as Pa’s? 3. Why do they say such things about Jonathan? 4. How is it sea wishes are bad? _

He’d gotten the last one from one of Father Mooneyham’s sermons. He’d been preaching on Thisby’s meaner traditions, and Brian hadn’t thought that wishes were so mean. Brian knows now his confusion then rested in a misunderstanding of the word “mean” as Father Mooneyham had used it, but the lecture he’d gotten at confession had made him keen to avoid them.

His uncle told him afterward that it was all well and good what his parents believed when they were alive, but it was up to him to decide what to set stock in from now on. His uncle officiates the races with a certain religious fervor and will spend every November first on the beaches for as long as he’s alive. Every year, Brian never knows whether to join him on the sands. Most of the time he watches from the cliffs, a safe distance away. 

When he is ten and parents are two months buried, his list looks like this:  _ 1\. Where do storms sleep when they’re not raging? 2. Why isn’t Pa here to teach me my knots? 3. Why do they still say such things about Jonathan’s brains? 4. How is it sea wishes didn’t stop their boat capsizing?  _

He tells Puck these things about the wishes being curses because there’s a fear lodged deep in that scar on his chest that it was his wish that tossed his parents’ boat that night. She doesn’t know to comfort him. This itself is a form of comfort; Brian says as much to Annie the next day when he walks them to Palsson’s. Puck doesn’t pretend to be sorry for him because she doesn’t know. He tells Annie he likes it better than the fishermen who awkwardly slip coins into his jacket when they think he isn’t watching. He doesn’t tell Annie he’d thought he’d fancied Puck once.

Brian had just buried his parents and said goodbye to his oldest sister when he’d wandered into Fathom and Sons. He thinks now Annie knew, though he’d never mentioned it; her version of feeling sorry for him is more selfish than everyone else’s, which is why he likes it. It’s easier to let others feel selfish than to let himself feel grief.

Annie catches his notebook one night. He doesn’t realize until he’s home and looking for it; he has a host of questions to write that he doesn’t want to vanish in his hands. They look like this:  _ 1\. Where does love go when it isn’t loving? 2. Why is Tommy Falk as nice to look at as Esther in her fancy mainland clothes? 3. When will my sisters write so they will stop saying such things about us being left behind? 4. How is it my sea wish hasn’t given us enough fish to turn into bread? _

The last thing he’d written in it, the thing Annie must see when she opens to the rope holding his place, is  _ 1\. Where do love go when it’s not breathing? 2. Why do my knots still not look as nice as Pa’s did? 3. Why won’t my lungs ever get better? 4. How is it all my sea wishes have done is stick me to this pier? _ She doesn’t say if she read it, but his journal sits on his usual chair in the attic the next morning, and instead of telling him she asks him where he wants to go for the day.

A few months afterward Jonathan finds his journal, and that conversation takes long into the night and then into the morning. They both cry.

That night after they talk, Jonathan gives Brian a bright yellow journal that he recognizes from Fathom and Sons. Jonathan says, “It’s for the things you do know,” and Brian hugs his brother. Jonathan doesn’t comment on the tear tracks left down his shirt except to hold Brian tighter.

Brian Carroll carries lists of things he has answers to in a journal that was a rare gift. The first list looks like this:  _ 1\. Fish sleep in the sea when they’re not swimming. 2. My knots look good enough to get the job done. 3. I’ve stopped them from saying such things about Jonathan. 4. Sea wishes are another thing to believe in, but to be careful about. _

November first comes and he’s on the beach. Brian doesn’t have reins in his hands but he’s there, setting stock in something. His uncle sees him and smiles across yards and yards of sand. Thisby sends a seabreeze to caress his face. 

His list tonight will look like this:  _ 1\. I know why I won’t leave this pier. _


	5. Sean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When he is seven, Sean Kendrick knows to stay away from the caverns at high tide and that holly berries are deadly to capaill and he learns both at the same time.   
> His father keeps him pinned to the cliff face with just his fingers grazing Sean’s chest. Sean watches his father with wide eyes and his heart bumping into his ribcage, but there’s an older heartbeat crashing in the surf around his calves. His father’s fingers are the only things keeping him from diving in to dissolve in the rhythm.

When he is seven, Sean Kendrick knows to stay away from the caverns at high tide and that holly berries are deadly to capaill and he learns both at the same time. 

His father keeps him pinned to the cliff face with just his fingers grazing Sean’s chest. Sean watches his father with wide eyes and his heart bumping into his ribcage, but there’s an older heartbeat crashing in the surf around his calves. His father’s fingers are the only things keeping him from diving in to dissolve in the rhythm.

A strand of hair wraps slick against his ankle as the  _ capall’s _ body thuds against the cliff face once, twice, keeping with the beat. Sean’s father presses his forefinger so hard against Sean’s skin that a circular bruise blooms below his collar, but they live. 

His father tells him afterward to keep away from the sea when the tide is clogged with storm debris. Sean nods at the lesson, but he is thinking of the  _ capall’s _ mane brushing against his leg. His father, when he tells him they can drag a person down easy as blinking, is afraid. In the years to come Sean promises himself he will not be. 

He did not grow up loving them, but he learned. Ever since that night in the surf he tests theories, reading old manuscripts on Thisby’s so old they crinkle under his fingers. He practices knots on a spare bit of rope Brian Carroll gives him with a smile and a promise to save him the best catch of the day. Sean smiles with as much of a smile as he can spare and shakes on it.

At age nine he has watched his father race numerous times in all kinds of weather. It’s meant to storm today, so he tells his father to rub his mare’s haunches counterclockwise to steady her. His father does not. Sean tastes third place as soon as his father steps into the stirrups. 

Age ten, his father is a red and bone smear on the beach. Sean has to wave off seagulls in order to get his father to the pyre. He does not cry until he’s left with his father’s old jacket, blood still caked on the sleeves with sand. 

He wipes his eyes on his own shirt. There is no time to grieve, but there is time to smarten up his father’s jacket.

Benjamin Malvern knows what Sean wants the moment he steps into his home, but he still asks. 

Sean tells him, “A roof over my head and reins in my hands and food on my table,” and Benjamin Malvern considers him over a cup of butter, milk, and salted tea. 

“That will do nicely,” Malvern tells him. “Care for my horses, and you will have a room here.”

Sean Kendrick did not know then that Benjamin Malvern likes investments. He learns it quickly. He rides in his first races at the age of thirteen. He brought back a broken wrist from a horse crushing against him and a bleeding nose from a fist and a burning hunger to catch a capall quick enough to pull away from the others. He is clever and knows things that work, but he is still a boy, and the riders still see a boy when he steps onto the sand. He will not allow himself to be frightened on that beach.

He stays up the day after the races with tired and burning eyes in the same spot his father killed the  _ capaill _ and the Scorpio Sea whispers to his pulse. A red splash nearby keeps him from falling asleep out of fear that he is bleeding. 

“Corr,” he says, and he smiles even as Corr’s scream echoes off the cliff face. He did not grow up loving them, but he is beginning to. They look at each other, boy and  _ capaill. _ Corr flicks his eyes back, and Sean’s breath fills the cavern. 

It is three months of aching legs and shuddering muscles before Corr listens to him at all, even if he refuses to do anything Sean wants him to. Sean is patient. He has been looking for Corr in every breaking wave since his father died. Now he has him, he can wait. He stocks up on salt and iron and spends three weeks standing outside Corr’s stall and whispers about what he thinks Corr needs to hear. 

Brian still saves him fish. From the way his hands brush Sean’s, Sean wonders about him. There is no time to test any theories, though; he walks around too often with buckets of blood and newly dead meat to have any time for soft things, and Brian is soft as Sean’s worn jacket when he gets to washing it. 

He wins on Corr’s back when he is fourteen. Ian Privett, drenched both from the rain and from second place, stares. So does the rest of the island. Sean spits on his fingers and holds them both to Corr’s neck before leading him to the journalists. Next year, Sean doesn’t stop at the flash of lights. 

Next year Puck kisses him, and he is nervous. It is acceptable because nervous does not always mean afraid. He falls behind in the mess of fighting horses and is not afraid when he hits the ground. He always meant to die on these sands, one way or another; some kind of surety rises in his chest here, echoing with the rush of the tide, every beat of hooves on the sand above him. He doesn’t close his eyes in the waiting. No use being afraid of it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading :) if you've got any characters you'd like to see explored, drop me a comment below or [let me know on tumblr!](http://ivecarvedawoodenheart.tumblr.com)


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